What's the name of this conglomerate? So you're saying that like PNY Kingston Corsair PATRIOT and every other brand from expensive American made to cheapy Chinese made is really from the same entity?

12-17-2009

cyberfish

I thought there are a few memory chips manufacturers - Micron, Microchip, Qimonda, Hynix, etc.

Quote:

What's the name of this conglomerate? So you're saying that like PNY Kingston Corsair PATRIOT and every other brand from expensive American made to cheapy Chinese made is really from the same entity?

They buy memory chips from those companies above, and slap them onto their own PCBs, and use their own branding. If you look at your memory modules (may need to take off the heatspreader if it's a high end module), you can probably see the chip manufacturer's name on the actual memory chips. Different modules from different manufacturers that use the same chips tend to behave very similarly (in terms of overclocking potential, and how well it responds to increased voltage).

Yeah I used to think I was doing multithreading too prior to the advent of dual-core/dual-proc machines. Then I got my first one and had to troubleshoot a thread contention issue where two threads really WERE executing and it was a whole new ballgame.....a completely new class of bugs can manifest with multiple processors than what you see on a single-proc machine with threads....since then I don't touch anything with less than two cores (for development that is...my netbook is single-proc but I only use that for doing one-off projects or entertainment)....

12-17-2009

abachler

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffcobb

Yeah I used to think I was doing multithreading too prior to the advent of dual-core/dual-proc machines. Then I got my first one and had to troubleshoot a thread contention issue where two threads really WERE executing and it was a whole new ballgame.....a completely new class of bugs can manifest with multiple processors than what you see on a single-proc machine with threads....since then I don't touch anything with less than two cores (for development that is...my netbook is single-proc but I only use that for doing one-off projects or entertainment)....

lol, no I mean real multi-threading/multiprocessing. There were dual CPU 486 servers you know. Multi-CPU motherboards where all the rage before the multi-cores came out.

12-17-2009

VirtualAce

Quote:

Among the retardations that I'm hearing are gems like "XP is low-end, Vista is faster" (which has been proven to be false) and "Vista uses 1.5GB of RAM just from booting to the desktop" (yeah right).

You don't really need to argue this point with whomever it is. The evidence is all over the internet that is simply not true. Vista on average uses 1.5 times more RAM for any given application than XP does. Just look at the requirements for Vista and XP on any boxed app and you will see they clearly recommend more for Vista. But I doubt it takes 1.5GB just to get to the desktop.

12-17-2009

cyberfish

I think that's because Vista adopted the "Linux-style" disk caching. I guess people would rather have free RAM than cached disk content in unused RAM...

Many Linux beginners ask that question, too. After running for a few hours, almost all Linux installations will report close to 0 free RAM.

12-17-2009

abachler

The problem is that Vista is too aggressive in allocating the 'free' ram to disk cache. This causes excessive disk thrashing.

12-17-2009

cyberfish

I'm not sure how Vista does it, but for Linux, as soon as an application needs the RAM, the cached content is thrown out. It won't touch swap until nearly all RAM is occupied by applications.

12-17-2009

MK27

Well, whatever, who cares. The thing most likely to get overheated around here processing on this machine is me.

Agreed!!! What's the deal with memory being so much slower than processors? We can't fully utilize the true potential of the processor with this big bottleneck on the speed of memory, even with optimizations such as caching, pipelining, etc., etc., etc.

Because memory cannot keep up! Processors are leaky and that's why they evolve so fast.
Memory cannot be leaky, which is one of the biggest problems.
At least, that is what I've heard some time ago.
We need some new revolutionary type of memory to boost speeds to processor levels in the same time. But if the clock speed stays static, then all we need is a little time. We're already up at 1.2 GHz memory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zacs7

That's ridiculous. Socket design has an enormous amount to do with processor design. If you restricted them to the same pin pattern, you'd be restricting the design of processors. You really expect Intel and AMD to work together? Considering the benefits to either of them is close to nil.

Consider this... A universal 1024-pin socket exists that AMD and Intel both use for their quad-core processors. However, both AMD and Intel are designing oct-core processors (both in secret, they are rivals after all). You really expect them to stay with the 1024-pin socket? Even if the design permitted, it wouldn't be optimal. You can't expect AMD to contact Intel (or vice-versa) and say "we want to develop a oct-core processor, we need a new socket".

Even if you did that, all it would take is MIPS to strike a deal with <some motherboard manufacturer> and undercut the whole market.

That being said... go MIPS :).

I'm going to have to agree with zacs7 on this one. To say they use different boards to lock-in is ridiculous. It's a design matter, I think.

As for the original topic, I like the energy-efficient and cheap parts.
I don't like overclocking, either, at least not when it comes to raising the voltage.
Energy is more important to me than speed, and cheap parts more so than expensive ones.
I even had to underclock the graphics card because it was consuming too much wattage for my poor PSU.

12-18-2009

cyberfish

My very uneducated guess is that it's because DRAM is more analog. CPU is just a bunch of transistors switching. DRAM is actually transistors and capacitors (that actually store the information). Charging up capacitors takes more time.

Static memory (flip-flops) used for CPU cache is a lot faster, but also a lot more expensive.

12-18-2009

Elysia

The biggest problem with SRAM is its size. DRAM takes up very little place compared to SRAM.
And yes, DRAM is slower because of the capacitors :)

12-18-2009

MK27

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberfish

My very uneducated guess is that it's because DRAM is more analog. CPU is just a bunch of transistors switching. DRAM is actually transistors and capacitors (that actually store the information). Charging up capacitors takes more time.

So heat build up could become an issue in the memory then too if it were faster?

12-18-2009

cyberfish

All transistors get hot if we switch them fast, because of their capacitances. Modern CMOS gates only consume significant power (and hence put out heat) when they switch, because Vdd and ground are connected briefly when they switch (both transistor networks conducting). CMOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For DRAM, I'm not sure.

They certainly do get warm, though. But it could just be the transistors.